W2BTD

The thing about Reigns, is they won't search for reasons to derail that train. His live reactions can't touch Bryan, and like Bryan there is no evidence The Shield or Reigns specifically is anything more than a decent TV & PPV draw at best, but don't think for one second that push is going anywhere but all the way. He'll be the new Orton. Evidence be damned, this guy is a STAR.

This is exactly the type of thing I was talking about earlier in the thread in terms of these WWE robots having no clue how to improvise to adverse situations. This company is full of people who are completely lost & without a clue when things go off the rails.

I was being critical of Orton more than Cena. It happens to Orton fairly often. And he pouts about it.

I don't think they're trolling. I think they are completely tone deaf and lack self awareness. They wouldn't intentionally sabotage Sheamus, Langston, Batista, and Mysterio. They thought that match layout would work. And they likely won't concede that it didn't. They'll likely blame a rebel crowd. The old "vocal minority".

The downside of being a product of WWE developmental is the complete inability to work a crowd when things go off the rails. Orton/Sheamus from RAW several months back. Orton/Cena tonight. Kofi/Rusev on NXT. Batista/Show in Hammerstein on ECW in 2006. I can go on and on. Five of those six guys know virtually nothing aside from what WWE taught them. Orton in particular is like a deer in the headlights when things don't go as planned. He froze tonight until they hit the closing stretch that they've been rehearsing on the house show swing. Visibly lost his temper. Same as the Sheamus match. They refine these guys and teach them the basics and all of the little things very well, but the one major weakness is that they don't work in front of real crowds and get that veteran seasoning. They know one style. And when they get lost, they stay lost.

I thought it was a lot of fun, hard hitting early with DBS still managing to work in his mat work, and it featured a ton of guys I really like. Damian Wayne took some big bumps late. Added points for everybody ribbing/sandbagging Erickson, minus points for Erickson being in the match to begin with. Going off of memory i'd say ***1/4 or so.

KES matches I reviewed that I thought were very good (over *** only): 1/4 Tokyo vs Goto & Anderson, ***1/2 2/10 Hiroshima vs TenKoji, **** 4/20 Houston vs Scot Summers & Ryan Genesis, **** (IWGP & NWA double title match) 10/18 Houston vs Tenan & Liger ***3/4 11/24 Kyoto vs Nakamura & Ishii ***1/4 4/5 Korakuen vs Nakamura & Ishii I didn't review but remember being good. Also 10/19 San Antonio four way NWA title match vs Wayne/Erickson, Claxton/Reigns, & Lou Marconi/Ray Rowe was well over *** but I didn't officially review that, either.

I honestly don't even remember much about the Evolve show, which I guess backs you up. Pretty sure that was the one where they ran into technical problems for the first time, handled it badly, and then karma caused issues the rest of the year. The DGUSA show was pretty great. The Evolve Florida triple shot a few weeks back was very, very good. And focused. I think Gabe caught a real break on the first night when Strong pulled out, because it forced him to book a very focused 5 match show that ended up being the best Evolve show in years, both in ring and creatively. For the first time in almost a year I came away looking forward to what was next.

Impact winning Best Show was sort of a fluke, as more than ever that particular year the half dozen or so WWE shows split the WWE vote. To a lesser extent, it's hard to remember but Impact was actually pretty decent for like two months that year during the Austin Aries chase to the title storyline, so it gave the hardcore anti WWE contingent a limb hang on to vote something different.

I agree with W2BTD. A lot of the posters here are simply griping or acting like they have the one true view of Wrestling when in fact there's a wider world of fans than those simply here or on DVDR or whatever. Also Dave disagreed with a fair amount of the results. People simply aren't just cribbing. In terms of the indies what absolutely stand out shows have there been? ROH has just been ok they get to the point of finding their legs momentum wise then they don't follow up on that. PWG has suffered from talent departures and what I feeling a lessening of effect due the style and lack of storylines. I've shown New Japan stuff to a huge array of fans of different levels of interest in Wrestling in general and feedback has been pretty much universally strongly positive. You will get the odd complaint about the lack of English commentary but that can't be helped but that's it. This was a down year for indies, no question about it. ROH was ok and I thought better than '12 but overall the word that comes to mind is "boring". PWG as rovert noted is great for what it is, which is a 3 hour adrenaline rush of FUN devoid of stories or context for the most part. Anecdotal, but we have a PWG reviewer for our site who is a big fan, never misses a show, and eats that shit for breakfast and even he failed to place a PWG match in his top ten for the year or a PWG show in his top three. Chikara died (sorta) then annoyed everybody with the Wrestling Is/super nerd stuff. DGUSA/Evolve was very 'meh' aside from some great stuff Mania weekend, and then it was all downhill from there with nothing that resonated. Smaller indies never do well because of exposure. I think WWE & New Japan deserved to dominate. Lucha, unfortunately, never does well so I never expect anything to get a ton of support from Mexico unless it's something that can't be denied like Mistico being the biggest star on earth. I think lucha is under represented worldwide, period.

Oh, and one more thing as i'm dozing off here. Reigns offense. I hate hate hate the spear as a rule. That's not his fault. I've seen the Superman punch twice, and once it missed by a mile, and the second time it looked like it landed but it wasn't sold very well. I think the spear works much better as a transition spot, so hopefully he slowly converts over to the punch as his finish. And I always feel like a complete dork picking on moves, so my skin is crawling typing this shit.

Cesero/Okada - I don't agree with either guy as being top three most improved this year because both were already among the best in the world in my opinion. I've felt this way about Cesaro going back to probably 2009 or so. To me, this year was the rest of the world figuring it out. I've seen Cesaro have years as good as 2013 in the past, although i'd have to think about his 2012 compared to 2013 since I applied that same criteria to Goldust as I had him at #3. It's 3:24 am as I type this and I don't really remember what his 2012 was like at the moment, so i'll have to think about it tomorrow and come back to this, although i'm 99.9% certain I didn't think of him as the non entity Goldust was that year. If there was a Comeback award along with most improved, I would have put Goldust there. But there isn't. I really think Most Improved should be for people who jump a level or two, not for guys who come back. But since that doesn't exist, I figured why not throw Goldust a bone a recognize him for his shocking year.

Obviously dave wields influence, but make no mistake, New Japan has done well in the awards the last two years because New Japan has been flat out great, and also because it has been more accessible than ever. dave also noted that he received more ballots than usual from Japan, which makes sense since New Japan is hot and people are getting back into it at a hardcore level. Also the UFC point is way off base, too. dave always covered it "hard". The TUF boom brought the pro wrestling fans in on UFC in large numbers, not dave pushing it on them. Otherwise, they'd have been all in on UFC from day one, which wasn't the case.

I watched every New Japan show in full that I could get my hands on, and have no idea what Alvarez was talking about when he brought up Suzuki vs Ishii.

The problem with TNA major shows is that nobody sees them, so nobody is going to vote for them.

Great point. Also, Daniel Bryan keeps winning Best Technical because people have turned it into a worker award (Tanahashi #2). 69 wet blankets voted Los Matadores Worst Gimmick. I mean, c'mon. Torito rules. The dire state of pro wrestling announcing. There needs to be a push to stop voting Dana White Best Promoter. First of all, he probably doesn't deserve it anymore. UFC keeps making bad decisions and struggles to create stars. Second, UFC & Joe Silva keep losing every year now so Dana is the last stand of taking the awards back. Then we can push hard to spit the damn things. This isn't 1999.

Cool, innovative move. Looks impressive as hell, and would take about one or two matches of the announcer putting it over as something more dangerous than a standard bodyslam to get it over as such. No less suspension of disbelief destroying than about 1,000 other moves. Don't get the gripes.

I think 3 1/2 stars for Bret-Piper at WM 8 is a little low. I always thought it was the match of the night and liked it much more than Savage-Flair. I agree with this, I love that Bret/Piper match.

To the shock of probably no one, I though Richards/Elgin was an excellent match, incredibly exciting, and while I don't think it's a five star match, it's very close. I thought it was easily the best match of that weekend.

Tremendous post. By now we all realize what his tastes are, and also things he tends to overrate, so you should know where your taste falls in or out of line with his. dave went through a period where every WWE PPV main event got a minimum of 4-stars. I knew I wasn't particularly into the WWE main event style during that time, so I understood the curve I was dealing with if he rated some forgettable Randy Orton vs Triple H b-show PPV match ****1/4. He digs that shit, I don't. It's no big deal. I know you were just throwing shit out there to make a point, but in the interests of nitpicking, I absolutely love the ****1/4 Orton/Hunter match. I actually get the same feeling though now about him reviewing New Japan. He's watching what he feels is a transcendentally great period of wrestling by that company and those guys, so every great match isn't just great, it's one of the greatest matches of all time. Same as during the time he'd rate every Kurt Angle TNA PPV match **** seemingly as a baseline. You just gotta roll with it. At the end of the day it's just a guy saying how much he liked a wrestling match. On the "Dave losing sleep" point above, I've always wanted to know if anyone has asked him how he feels now about rating Hogan/Andre -****. I think after getting harassed about it for so many years, he finally re-rated it at ** or something like that. Although I could be remembering the exact rating wrong, because I think he just tossed it out on an audio show or something from a mailbag question. The point is, he admitted the original was just silly, but he still doesn't love the match or anything. It was actually a few weeks later. Do you remember the rating?

Tremendous post. By now we all realize what his tastes are, and also things he tends to overrate, so you should know where your taste falls in or out of line with his. dave went through a period where every WWE PPV main event got a minimum of 4-stars. I knew I wasn't particularly into the WWE main event style during that time, so I understood the curve I was dealing with if he rated some forgettable Randy Orton vs Triple H b-show PPV match ****1/4. He digs that shit, I don't. It's no big deal. I know you were just throwing shit out there to make a point, but in the interests of nitpicking, I absolutely love the ****1/4 Orton/Hunter match. I actually get the same feeling though now about him reviewing New Japan. He's watching what he feels is a transcendentally great period of wrestling by that company and those guys, so every great match isn't just great, it's one of the greatest matches of all time. Same as during the time he'd rate every Kurt Angle TNA PPV match **** seemingly as a baseline. You just gotta roll with it. At the end of the day it's just a guy saying how much he liked a wrestling match. On the "Dave losing sleep" point above, I've always wanted to know if anyone has asked him how he feels now about rating Hogan/Andre -****. I think after getting harassed about it for so many years, he finally re-rated it at ** or something like that. Although I could be remembering the exact rating wrong, because I think he just tossed it out on an audio show or something from a mailbag question. The point is, he admitted the original was just silly, but he still doesn't love the match or anything.

Tremendous post. By now we all realize what his tastes are, and also things he tends to overrate, so you should know where your taste falls in or out of line with his. dave went through a period where every WWE PPV main event got a minimum of 4-stars. I knew I wasn't particularly into the WWE main event style during that time, so I understood the curve I was dealing with if he rated some forgettable Randy Orton vs Triple H b-show PPV match ****1/4. He digs that shit, I don't. It's no big deal.

I love the short Punk matches from ECW against Steven Richards & Justin Credible, and think it's some of the best stuff he's done in the company actually.

Believe me, I am very self aware as to what side of the tracks i'm on, and left some names off that average list that would have derailed this baby forever, lol.

I had Fatu typed out and took him off for some reason. I like his early tag team stuff but hate hate hate Rikishi with a passion. Tom Zenk I had typed out as well, until I thought about it and realized that I don't think he's average, I think he's terrible.